Opera and Choral Events

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Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Week of April 21 - 28, 2016





This week on Rhode Island Public television,
WSBE:  (Comcast 294, Cox 808, Full Channel 109, and Verizon 478) 
 *all links are live

Saturday, April 23, 2016, 8:00pm
Sunday, April 24, 2016 3:00am
Monday, April 25 2016, 12:00am

Great Performances at the Met


Le Nozze di Figaro





Le Nozze di Figaro
The Season 9 premiere features "Le Nozze di Figaro," Mozart's 1786 comic masterpiece, which has been updated to take place in 1930s-era Spain. It brings to life the upstairs-downstairs romantic complexities at an 18th-century manor house.
Duration: 210 min. 





News from Around the World of Music

Oh sad day--

James Levine retires from Met due to advancing Parkinson's  



Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine Set to Retire from the Met
Thursday, April 14, 2016
WQXR
By Amanda Angel
After a 45-year career at the Metropolitan Opera, the legendary maestro will become the organization's music director emeritus.




Opera heart-throb Kaufmann stood up by Gheorgiu mid-show
by Angus McPherson on April 19, 2016




Montreal orchestra gives violin to homeless musician
by Megan Steller on April 15, 2016




Javier Camarena: the tenor whose talent justifies a towering reputation


In Memoriam: 
Brian Asawa, 1966-2016


BY JANOS GEREBEN ,
April 19, 2016






WQXR


'Les Fêtes Vénitiennes,' a Vaudevillian Spectacle from the Baroque
Monday, April 18, 2016
WQXR
By David Patrick Stearns
William Christie's Les Arts Florissants and director Robert Carson revive Campra's 18th-century opera-ballet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. David Patrick Stearns reviews it.


Swedish soprano Nina Stemme stars in the title role of 'Elektra.'
Salonen Reveals the Dramatic Core of Strauss's 'Elektra'
Friday, April 15, 2016
By David Patrick Stearns
The Met stages Patrice Chereau's acclaimed production of 'Elektra,' starring Nina Stemme in the title role. David Patrick Stearns reviews the opera.






Fred Plotkin
In this posting from the “Live in HD Fans” Facebook page, Fred Plotkin writes the rare review. Here he discusses Placido Domingo and Ferruccio Furlanetto in a recent production of Simon Boccanegra. As you know, there has been much controversy about Domingo's choice, in the waning years of his career, to perform baritone in addition to tenor roles. Most people don't know that he started his career as a baritone. At 75, he is still a commanding presence on the opera stage. Plotkin's review:


From Fred Plotkin_4/17/2016 “Live in HD Fans” (Facebook):
Many of you have asked me to post my observations following the season's final "Simon Boccanegra" at the Met this evening. Anyone who was there will not forget it. Ever. As you know, I do not write reviews. So my words are those of an experienced (to put it mildly) operagoer who happens to count this Verdi masterpiece among his favorite operas. It was an extraordinary night in the opera world (not just at the Met) in that it inevitably combined the timeless and the temporal. It was the first performance James Levine conducted since it was announced that he would relinquish the title of Music Director at the end of the season and move to Emeritus status. He and the orchestra were accorded huge ovations from start to finish, but what was most discernible tonight was the great wash of emotion surrounding him from the audience, the orchestra pit and the stage. Consummate genius-artist that he is, he held everyone and everything together, guiding a last-minute substitution in one role with his customary attentive warmth. While the ovations and curtain calls could and should have been much longer, they were longer than most these days at the Met and deeply heartfelt. Every member of the cast was in top form, though there were moments when emotion crept in that went beyond the powerful feelings that this opera already contains. At moments, it was hard for the performer and audience members who knew what was underpinning this evening to not be overwhelmed. Lianna Haroutounian was a warm and sympathetic Amelia, the one soaring female voice among five men. Joseph Calleja was white-hot vocally and dramatically, lifting the performance with his voice when things got too sad. Stephen Gaertner (Paolo) and the ever-reliable Richard Bernstein provided vocal and theatrical ballast as the conspirators. Ferruccio Furlanetto is a singer and actor of such extraordinary complexity and power. He simply has no equal. When other basses play Jacopo Fiesco, the character is often depicted as angry and bitter. Those attributes are only one element of Furlanetto's portrayal, which turns Fiesco into a huge moral force, a reservoir of memory with a sense of justice (more than revenge) who is the ultimate truth teller. Remarkable. And that is the adjective I would apply to Plácido Domingo in the title role. I have tired of hearing people complain that he is not a natural-born baritone. and that at 75 he is too old and self-indulgent. The performance he gave tonight would be unforgettable for someone seeing him for the first time or the 500th. His voice is wonderfully expressive in this towering dramatic part. To me it equals his Otello but is in a range that is more congenial (not ideal, but I really don't care) now and the acting and musicianship were fantastic. The cast took several group curtain calls in front of the Met's beautiful gold curtain (which we see too rarely nowadays) so that they could gesture to and applaud James Levine. Most audience members could not see the Maestro in his motorized chair in the orchestra pit, but seeing the faces of the six singers said everything. Domingo, at a certain point, made a sign of the cross and shed a tear. A reader just sent in this video of some of the curtain calls. Although sound and picture are a bit out of sync, you get the idea of how the artists communicated with Maestro Levine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i6tKwLBqYo&feature=youtu.be













OPERA ON THE INTERNET 
WITH  
DAVE  D' AGUANNO



The LIVE opera from the Met this coming Saturday (April 23) is none other than the one that launched this season's series of HD-transmissions: Verdi's "Otello." The same two leading men who appeared in the HD-transmission will be singing their roles again this Saturday, namely Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello & Zeljko Lucic as Iago.

More Verdi is on tap for us this Saturday as another one of his Shakespearean adaptations can be heard, with a performance from Naples of his final opera "Falstaff." This is a broadcast of the performance of March 20, 2016.

Yet another Verdi opera turns up on this Saturday's ORF schedule, with a LIVE performance from the Vienna State Opera of "Un Ballo in Maschera" featuring tenor Piotr Beczala and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky in leading roles.

In addition, there are 2 FREE live audio-streams that the Met is offering within the next few days. First, on Friday evening, it's Mozart's "The Abduction from the Seraglio" followed on Monday evening by Puccini's "La Boheme."

Enjoy!

DAVE



The Met Saturday afternoon
 radio broadcast 
Saturday, April 23, 2016, 1:00 pm.   



Otello
VERDI

Fischer; Gerzmava, Antonenko, Dolgov, Lučić, Morris



No opera on
WGBH this week!


Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello

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